A question of ethics: right or wrong? This free course, A question of ethics: right or wrong?, discusses ethical and professional principles in sport and fitness environments. Working closely with individuals and developing relationships is an inherent and often satisfying part of the work of a sports coach or exercise instructor. However, it can bring about ethical and professional challenges and can sometimes place practitioners in a difficult or uncomfortable position, e.g. a confidence shared and/or personal dilemmas. The courseAuthor(s): Creator not set

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Introducing public health This free course, Introducing public health, presents some key elements of public health and health promotion. It considers the scope and focus of public health and how it is subject to change and located within the wider global context.
First published on Fri, 01 Jun 2018 as Author(s): Creator not set

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Other feminist writers have used psychodynamic ideas to support their argument that gender differences, while ‘real’, are not inevitable but the result of the ways in which children are socialised in contemporary western societies. Nancy Chodorow, for example, claims that the isolated nuclear family in contemporary capitalist society is responsible for creating ‘specific personality characteristics in men’:

After falling out of fashion in the wake of feminist influence in the 1970s and 1980s, there are signs that the notion of ‘essential’ gender differences is undergoing a revival. At an academic level, this has been stimulated by work within genetics, evolutionary psychology and neurology (see Baron-Cohen, 2003). At a more popular level, self-help manuals which apparently ‘explain’ the differences between men's and women's behaviours, and offer advice on coping with them, have become hu

The discussion above referred to some of the stereotypes about the ways in which men and women supposedly communicate and interact with each other. For example, there is a view that in meetings men tend to talk in a supposedly rational way, while women's talk is associated more with feelings and emotions. It was also suggested that male workers are more likely to be intimidating or overwhelming in their relationships with service users and, by implication, that female workers might be less in

Case Study 2: The Cameron family

David and Marie Cameron, a married couple in their 40s, live in a middle-class suburb. Marie teaches French at the local secondary school, while David is a full-time official for a clerical workers’ union. Both are active in the local Labour Author(s): The Open University

As we noted in Section 1, the names and labels used to denote specific differences – including those relating to ethnicity – are always changing. For example, the term ‘mixed background’ was first introduced in the 2001 census; also, different categories were used in the Northern Ireland census. So ethnic identities say something about how society categorises people, not about unchanging facts ‘out there’. You may also have noticed that the categories in the list refer to differen

By contrast with ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’ is still widely used to describe differences between groups, although like ‘race’ it is a contested term. The terms ‘ethnic’ and ‘ethnicity’ are commonly used to denote groups of people who share common national or geographical origins, values and beliefs, and customs and traditions. Unlike the notion of ‘race’, ethnicity does not imply innate biological differences but rather similarities derived from belonging to, or being brought

The word ‘race’ has largely been discredited in academic and policy discussions. You will notice that in this course, as elsewhere in the course, we have adopted the now common practice of putting the term ‘race’ in inverted commas, or ‘scare quotes’ as they are sometimes tellingly known. This is to indicate that, in current thinking, the idea of there being distinct ‘races’ and that human beings can be divided up on ‘racial’ grounds has been discredited. Racial thinking w

As noted in the Introduction, much of the debate about difference and diversity in health and social care has focused on issues of ‘race’ and ethnicity. It is perhaps the area that first comes to mind when there is discussion about issues of communication and difference in care services, but it is also an area where the arguments are most complex and contentious.

As you saw in Section 1, ‘racial’ or ethnic diversity has often been constructed as a ‘problem’ for health and so

These first few sections have emphasised the point that differences are always produced in a social context, and that a key part of that context is power relationships. As pointed out earlier, a key element of Foucault’s social constructionist approach is that the way in which people are categorised in society (for example, by gender, ethnicity or age) involves an exercise of power that reflects the ideas and interests of dominant groups. One of the key arguments against essentialist views

Aspects of identity may have different meanings at different times in people's lives, and the meanings that they attribute to aspects of their identity (for example, ethnicity) may be different from the meaning it has for others (for example, being black may be a source of pride for you, but the basis of someone else's negative stereotyping).

The identities people assume, and the relative importance they attach to them, change over time because of both personal change in their lives and change in the external world (for example, as a result of changing ideas about disability). Consequently, identity should not be seen as something ‘fixed’ within people.

This free course provided an introduction to studying Health and Social Care. It took you through a series of exercises designed to develop your approach to study and learning at a distance and helped to improve your confidence as an independent learner.

In this course you have seen the importance of the shared meanings that we construct together – how they enable us to act collectively within social situations. In particular, you have explored Goffman’s ideas about how those meanings are constructed through:

the way we present ourselves within social situations

the way we respond to other people’s presentation of themselves and help to shore up their performances.